April 30, 2012

The top post at Talking Points Memo, which I visited after I noticed it on my Blogroll and thought hey, I haven't gone there in a long time and then I wonder why I never go there anymore and then oh, I see.

ADDED: ... and then I'm going to blog about this and then hey, I need 5 stages.

67 comments:

It's nice to revist a little of the unhinged stupid/angry/crazy that was the Bachmann, Perry, and Santorum campaigns. It's too bad we don't have them to kick around any more. It takes a real piece of work to try to find a way to make the Osama killing not a positive for Obama, but those folks sure gave it the vaguely pathetic effort that we expect of them.

Republicans, and conservative libertarians like myself, applauded the death of bin Laden without reserve. Can't speak for the candidates, as I didn't really care what they said.

Now imagine the hue, cry, teeth-gnashing, and garment-rending that would have occurred if W. had gotten bin Laden in 2003 and even mentioned in passing during his re-election campaign. Dumbocrats would've repudiated it as the poorest of W.'s poor form. So the fact that the GOP candidates are subjecting Barry to a mild, mild version of the same is inconsequential. Go suck on it. And Talking Points Memo is a lefty hack digi-rag. I'm sorry I clicked through. I resisted the link to hattie but got suckered on this one. Behold the power of the Althouse link.

Wow you really to have to awe inspiringly stupid to be Andy R. Really, Bin Laden was cornered and handed to Obama on a silver plate and this is big achiement? Other than Bill Clinton what president wouldn't have issued the order? Next the left would trumpet this as the equivalent of Truman dropping the bomb on, not that Truman lost much sleep over that. If this is all TPM and the Obama butt kissers have, game over.

Obama has made a big mistake trotting this issue out in April instead of September. This is the only action of his administration which can get any traction outside the far-left base. I keep asking-- what else can he run on? Does he seriously think one issue will carry him to victory?

You could have (and maybe someone did) made the same 5 points about the left's reaction to George Bush's handling of the 9/11 crisis. It's politics. It doesn't take long for talking points to show up. In fact, it doesn't even have to be talking points per se. People automatically begin to spin any event into a political bonus for their side. We all know this and are prepared to debate any issue at any time. Demonizing the other side is predictable. So what? Should one side not do it just to give the other side a "fair" chance. This is schoolyard stuff. We've all been doing it since kindergarten.

I always thought the obsession with bin Laden and al Qaeda was kind of dumb and gave both far more legitimacy than they deserved.

The lasting damage both caused wasn't 9/11, but the imposition of TSA and a tangible reduction in freedom. You could say that bin Laden and al Qaeda won one battle, lost the rest, but still won the war.

What I wonder is where does TPM get its money to operate? I have a hard time believing that they make it on ads alone. They are always advertising to fill new positions, adding staff, etc,. They are, for all intents and purposes, a house organ of the democrat party and seem to have a pipeline to every wretch that toils for a left wing-(D) congressman or senator or works deep in the bowels of some federal agency.I had hopes that when Josh Marshall started this site he would act as an honest broker, meaning that while he leaned left, he would try to give an honest account of both sides and hold them both accountable in the interest of what was the best for the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is nothing more than a partisan hack. It smells like Soros but I have no proof. Hopefully some day his funding sources will come out and his credibility shot to hell where it belongs.

garage you never miss an oportunity to demonstrate being the hack that you are. Bush killed the right guys and handed Obama the tools to kill Bin Laden when he literally was handed to him on a silver platter. wow i' m impressed that zero in three and a half years did one thing right. a broken clock is right twice a day and zero hasn't even reached that level of accuracy. like i said before, if this all the left has to crow about, game over.

Bob BrunoYou know what? F--k every Republican alive today. The rest of us are sick of their stupid BS and their constant, butthurt whining. F--k them all in the ear and f--k them again in the other ear. Stupid crybabies.Backwards.Now, more than ever. and HartThorn like this.15 Minutes Ago from slate.com · Reply

Backwards.Now, more than ever.Every single one of them? Ewe. OK Bob, you start. I'll spell ya when we get to Sarah Palin.5 Minutes Ago from slate.com · Reply

Yep Bin Laden was corned and had been so for years, he had been fingered durning the Bush years, but it took Obama to make the final call and these five stages of Republican nonsense followed.The difficult reality, as Peter L. Bergen points out, is that OBama has become the Warrior in Chief, upsetting both the right and the left.

Assuming it wasn't all Panetta's doing, as some accounts suggest, for Zero to act as if he did more than sign off on a proposal is a laugh.

The issue is, if Dubya hadn't started the wheels in motion when he was POTUS, would Barry have done so?

Do the math.

Andy R. said...

It's nice to revist a little of the unhinged stupid/angry/crazy that was the Bachmann, Perry, and Santorum campaigns. It's too bad we don't have them to kick around any more. It takes a real piece of work to try to find a way to make the Osama killing not a positive for Obama, but those folks sure gave it the vaguely pathetic effort that we expect of them.

I don't recall any of them saying anything of the kind, but our own little Dan Savage is suffering the effects of all those nightsticks to the head he took when he was Occupying Hotlanta.

garage mahal said...

Bin Laden was cornered and handed to Obama on a silver plate and this is big achiement?

Bush killed the wrong guy. Obama cleaned up his mess and killed the right guy.

No, the right guy is Zawahiri.

You go for the brains, not the rich wannabe.

PS Considering all Zero has done to sabotage the War on Terror, both as a Senator and as POTUS, the idea of him trying to grab any credit is an insult to the men and women who do all the heavy lifting.

-- No, he was just in the right place at the right time. Also, the Democrats have stopped complaining and leaking to the media, so it has gotten easier to use drones and keep Gitmo open. If they had worked with Bush as much, who knows what successes he'd have had. If they hadn't hollowed out the military so he had to start from practically scratch, where would he have gotten.

How is he smarter, garage? Did he actually go out and unearth the intelligence that located Bin Laden? Did he brief the team that made the kill? Or did he just check off the box on the paper presented to him?

After all, he killed Bin Laden and Bush didn't / couldn't.

Outside of the fact that President Golfy McGutsy didn't do anything more than give the word, it is amusing watching the party of "General Betrayus" suddenly embrace the military.

I'm glad Bin Laden's dead. But the idea that King Putt is now a "Warrior in Chief" is the biggest joke outside of your posts.

Anyway, I do enjoy the fact you and your stupid ilk think this is some sort of winning message as if the 8 years you spent shrieking about "politicizing 9-11" and "Bush is a war criminal" and "not my President" never happened.

Face it, Obama is just much smarter than Bush, and by proxy, you

Well, unlike Obama, I know there aren't 57 states and an asthma inhaler isn't a 'breathalyzer'

I think that Reynolds is correct here, that if Ariana Huffington is going to criticize the Obama ad that highlights the killing of OBL, and then suggests that Romney might not have ordered it, then the President is in trouble.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

With:

The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq. The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate 'em.

I highlighted the use of the use of first person pronouns, and leave it to the reader to guess which recent President said what. And, yes, which one was acting like a leader, and which one had the respect of the military following him.

YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING: Huffington: Obama's bin Laden ad 'despicable'.

I could agree that claim the President is trying to make is a real stretch -- almost laughably implausible -- but despicable? What's so despicable about it?

I think what Obama building on is the criticism of his juvenile chest-beating about how he was going to violate Pakistan's sovereignty. But the criticism wasn't entirely about violating Pakistani sovereignty (it was public knowledge by mid 2008 that Bush II had been authorising raids into Pakistani territory, so it wasn't like Republicans actually had a big problem with conducting cross-border raids into Pakistan as such). It was about highlighting that fact, and needlessly antagonising Pakistani public opinion, thereby weakening those (already weak) powers withing Pakistan that might be inclined to cooperate with the US.

I think it's almost incredible to suppose a Republican president (well, other than a President Ron Paul, I guess) wouldn't have authorised the raid if they had good intelligence.

Anyhow, I don't see Obama's claim as despicable, just highly implausible. And in fact, I suspect the average American would find it implausible -- sort of in the same way that when Obama accused McCain of being unpatriotic/unamerican (with respect to outsourcing, etc.), it had no effect whatsoever, since it was obviously, laughably untrue. This is not quite as laughably untrue, but it's close. And that makes it difficult for me to see the claim as "despicable."

The only thing gutsy about the call was that it had the potential to alienate Obama's base. The same base that voted for him to close Gitmo, to end the war immediately, and lambasted Cheney for suggesting Obama be captured dead or alive. For those of us not in Obama's base, the gutsy thing was the Navy SEALs and US Army Nightstalkers, who put their actual skin in the game and their lifes on the line.

You want to know what call I wish Obama had made? The smart call, the call in which after putting others lives on the line to raid Osama's lair; you wait a week or a month to exploit the intelligence captured at the site. The call that allows you to get to those who were close to Osama but not at the lair at the time of the raid. The call that required you to not run out and spike the football for short term political advantage, but hold off for the long term advantage of your country.

I applaud BO's getting OBL. But it its odd all this crowing since he's essentially continued Bush's policy in A-Stan and Iraq, not to mention new military intervention in Libya (and all those drones attacks).